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Expectation of privacy was nice while it lastedFollow

#127 Jul 14 2016 at 3:34 PM Rating: Default
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Jophiel wrote:
Indiscriminately hacking hundreds of millions of computers "just because" seems like a foolish way to go about things since you're vastly expanding your chance of being discovered while you're collecting baby photos and Adele CD rips.
It's foolish when you have actual people going to terrorist websites, groups and supporting websites. Those websites exist because people go there. Why would you randomly hack a computer when you KNOW that this individual is trying be a terrorist.
#128 Jul 14 2016 at 5:12 PM Rating: Decent
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someproteinguy wrote:
Jophiel wrote:
Indiscriminately hacking hundreds of millions of computers "just because" seems like a foolish way to go about things since you're vastly expanding your chance of being discovered while you're collecting baby photos and Adele CD rips.
If you add in the fact serious terrorists seem to do things like forgo technology and use disposable cell phones then it makes even less sense. The people you most want to catch are probably not going to be found by getting access to their facebook page.


Ding. Because it was never about catching the terrorists. It about power and control. Before trrists became a useful scapegoat, we had hippies, commies, great depression.. any excuse is a good excuse to expand one's reach.
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#129 Jul 14 2016 at 5:14 PM Rating: Decent
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Almalieque wrote:
Jophiel wrote:
Indiscriminately hacking hundreds of millions of computers "just because" seems like a foolish way to go about things since you're vastly expanding your chance of being discovered while you're collecting baby photos and Adele CD rips.
It's foolish when you have actual people going to terrorist websites, groups and supporting websites. Those websites exist because people go there. Why would you randomly hack a computer when you KNOW that this individual is trying be a terrorist.


How do you try being a terrorist?
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#130 Jul 14 2016 at 5:44 PM Rating: Good
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angrymnk wrote:
Almalieque wrote:
Jophiel wrote:
Indiscriminately hacking hundreds of millions of computers "just because" seems like a foolish way to go about things since you're vastly expanding your chance of being discovered while you're collecting baby photos and Adele CD rips.
It's foolish when you have actual people going to terrorist websites, groups and supporting websites. Those websites exist because people go there. Why would you randomly hack a computer when you KNOW that this individual is trying be a terrorist.


How do you try being a terrorist?


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#131 Jul 14 2016 at 7:50 PM Rating: Decent
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TirithRR wrote:
angrymnk wrote:
Almalieque wrote:
Jophiel wrote:
Indiscriminately hacking hundreds of millions of computers "just because" seems like a foolish way to go about things since you're vastly expanding your chance of being discovered while you're collecting baby photos and Adele CD rips.
It's foolish when you have actual people going to terrorist websites, groups and supporting websites. Those websites exist because people go there. Why would you randomly hack a computer when you KNOW that this individual is trying be a terrorist.


How do you try being a terrorist?




I never understood this. How can you hate a country that has bestgore.com?
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#132 Jul 15 2016 at 7:54 AM Rating: Good
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angrymnk wrote:
How do you try being a terrorist?
Lots of practice on monkey bars.
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#133 Jul 15 2016 at 8:42 PM Rating: Decent
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ITT: We learn that Alma does not understand the concept that what may happen tomorrow is not the same as what's happening today. Waiting until after a public policy has been implemented to discuss whether it constitutes a violation of our rights seems like a really poor approach.

And yes, Angry is correct. The concern isn't that the government might discover some terrorists plot by hacking their home computers or their cell phones, but that in the course of justifying hacking people's computers and cell phones to look for terrorists, they'll collect a vast amount of information about everyone else. And again, it's not about what that information might be specifically, or how it might be used specifically, but about protecting the basic idea that there are "private" spaces in which we all should legally expect to remain free of search absent due process.

The topic is of interest to me because I know people who do argue that since so much information about us is already available via all these public sources, that we should not longer expect privacy at all. I find that very line of thinking to be problematic and flawed. If enough people do adopt that thinking, then resistance to actual 4th amendment intrusion will weaken, and then we may actually lose that right over time. It is a sort of actualized slippery slope and IMO we should make sure to avoid it.

On the flip side though, we need not be paranoid about it. I also see far too many people proclaiming a violation of their privacy when there really isn't one (such as in the OP linked story). Hence my focus on the concept of public versus private spaces. If you understand these concepts, it's not too difficult to see when your rights are being violated and when they are not. But it does seem as though far too many people are confused over this, in both directions. Which only serves to lead to them doing things like proclaiming that privacy is dead already.
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#134 Jul 15 2016 at 9:03 PM Rating: Excellent
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angrymnk wrote:
someproteinguy wrote:
Jophiel wrote:
Indiscriminately hacking hundreds of millions of computers "just because" seems like a foolish way to go about things since you're vastly expanding your chance of being discovered while you're collecting baby photos and Adele CD rips.
If you add in the fact serious terrorists seem to do things like forgo technology and use disposable cell phones then it makes even less sense. The people you most want to catch are probably not going to be found by getting access to their facebook page.


Ding. Because it was never about catching the terrorists. It about power and control. Before trrists became a useful scapegoat, we had hippies, commies, great depression.. any excuse is a good excuse to expand one's reach.
Feels like this is more of a Hanlon's razor situation.
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#135 Jul 15 2016 at 9:06 PM Rating: Default
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gbaji wrote:
ITT: We learn that Alma does not understand the concept that what may happen tomorrow is not the same as what's happening today. Waiting until after a public policy has been implemented to discuss whether it constitutes a violation of our rights seems like a really poor approach.

And yes, Angry is correct. The concern isn't that the government might discover some terrorists plot by hacking their home computers or their cell phones, but that in the course of justifying hacking people's computers and cell phones to look for terrorists, they'll collect a vast amount of information about everyone else. And again, it's not about what that information might be specifically, or how it might be used specifically, but about protecting the basic idea that there are "private" spaces in which we all should legally expect to remain free of search absent due process.

The topic is of interest to me because I know people who do argue that since so much information about us is already available via all these public sources, that we should not longer expect privacy at all. I find that very line of thinking to be problematic and flawed. If enough people do adopt that thinking, then resistance to actual 4th amendment intrusion will weaken, and then we may actually lose that right over time. It is a sort of actualized slippery slope and IMO we should make sure to avoid it.

On the flip side though, we need not be paranoid about it. I also see far too many people proclaiming a violation of their privacy when there really isn't one (such as in the OP linked story). Hence my focus on the concept of public versus private spaces. If you understand these concepts, it's not too difficult to see when your rights are being violated and when they are not. But it does seem as though far too many people are confused over this, in both directions. Which only serves to lead to them doing things like proclaiming that privacy is dead already.

See posts #122 and #123. What you are claiming as a possibility is ineffective for a malicious government to do and would never be accepted by society. Even a script kiddie wouldn't do what you are proposing.
#136 Jul 15 2016 at 10:38 PM Rating: Decent
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someproteinguy wrote:
angrymnk wrote:
someproteinguy wrote:
Jophiel wrote:
Indiscriminately hacking hundreds of millions of computers "just because" seems like a foolish way to go about things since you're vastly expanding your chance of being discovered while you're collecting baby photos and Adele CD rips.
If you add in the fact serious terrorists seem to do things like forgo technology and use disposable cell phones then it makes even less sense. The people you most want to catch are probably not going to be found by getting access to their facebook page.


Ding. Because it was never about catching the terrorists. It about power and control. Before trrists became a useful scapegoat, we had hippies, commies, great depression.. any excuse is a good excuse to expand one's reach.
Feels like this is more of a Hanlon's razor situation.


Inertia, incompetence, or simple idiocy can certainly be a factor, and there most certainly is an element of luck in all of this, but is it that hard to believe that you once have power you are as likely to let it go voluntarily as lamprey letting go of a fish? Or to put it another way, would you let it go once you grasped a meaningful slice?

Edited, Jul 16th 2016 12:44am by angrymnk
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#137 Jul 15 2016 at 10:59 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
The topic is of interest to me because
-- fear mongering is a primary tactic of conservatives.
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#138 Jul 15 2016 at 11:55 PM Rating: Excellent
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angrymnk wrote:
Inertia, incompetence, or simple idiocy can certainly be a factor, and there most certainly is an element of luck in all of this, but is it that hard to believe that you once have power you are as likely to let it go voluntarily as lamprey letting go of a fish? Or to put it another way, would you let it go once you grasped a meaningful slice?
Probably not, but they don't have a meaningful slice.

Ask yourself this, who is above the law in the U.S.? The answer isn't the cops. Sure they'll get away with something now and again, especially if the victim is some poor minority no one cares about, but they don't get a pass on anything meaningful. The ones who get away with stuff are the affluenzic wealthy.

More likely the police/military/whatever-you-want-to-call-them-security-forces are simply not able to stop terrorist attacks. This isn't exactly a big leap in logic, we see attacks pretty frequently around the world. Now that's not to say it's an easy thing to do of course, there's usually very few signs that are obvious even to a trained eye before the attacks take place, assuming the plot is being carried out by a competent group. Sure we'll try and spy on them, we also thought there were WMDs in Iraq, being ferried around always just away one step ahead of us. A hidden army of labs in giant trucks and whatnot; so it's fair to say our intelligence gathering isn't perfect.

So we cast a wide net, and filter millions of communications hoping for some lucky combination of Tor Browser + google "bomb-making" + Islamic + whatever = catching a terrorist. The thing is, that sometimes works, so we keep doing it. Why does it work? Well because if there's one place there's an endless amount of incompetence it's with the various low-brow criminals who try to cause problems. Sure the security people might miss the big fish, but they catch enough little dumb ones to justify the program to the rich and powerful, and convince them they should keep funding it so that way their new skyscraper might not get blown up.

So yeah, incompetence and stupidity are a sufficient explanation.

Smiley: tinfoilhat

Edited, Jul 15th 2016 11:45pm by someproteinguy
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#139 Jul 16 2016 at 5:59 AM Rating: Default
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ORRRRRR.. They target areas where terrorist tend to go to and THEN start tracking those individuals and their connections! I don't understand for the life of me why you people think that it is worth the resources to just randomly look at stuff.
#140 Jul 16 2016 at 6:03 AM Rating: Good
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Almalieque wrote:
ORRRRRR.. They target areas where terrorist tend to go to and THEN start tracking those individuals and their connections! I don't understand for the life of me why you people think that it is worth the resources to just randomly look at stuff.
They're American. And American's are afraid of everything.
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#141 Jul 16 2016 at 9:27 AM Rating: Good
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Almalieque wrote:
ORRRRRR.. They target areas where terrorist tend to go to and THEN start tracking those individuals and their connections! I don't understand for the life of me why you people think that it is worth the resources to just randomly look at stuff.


Yet. The resource costs of data collection and analysis will likely go down.
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#142 Jul 16 2016 at 1:33 PM Rating: Decent
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someproteinguy wrote:
angrymnk wrote:
Inertia, incompetence, or simple idiocy can certainly be a factor, and there most certainly is an element of luck in all of this, but is it that hard to believe that you once have power you are as likely to let it go voluntarily as lamprey letting go of a fish? Or to put it another way, would you let it go once you grasped a meaningful slice?
Probably not, but they don't have a meaningful slice.

Ask yourself this, who is above the law in the U.S.? The answer isn't the cops. Sure they'll get away with something now and again, especially if the victim is some poor minority no one cares about, but they don't get a pass on anything meaningful. The ones who get away with stuff are the affluenzic wealthy.

More likely the police/military/whatever-you-want-to-call-them-security-forces are simply not able to stop terrorist attacks. This isn't exactly a big leap in logic, we see attacks pretty frequently around the world. Now that's not to say it's an easy thing to do of course, there's usually very few signs that are obvious even to a trained eye before the attacks take place, assuming the plot is being carried out by a competent group. Sure we'll try and spy on them, we also thought there were WMDs in Iraq, being ferried around always just away one step ahead of us. A hidden army of labs in giant trucks and whatnot; so it's fair to say our intelligence gathering isn't perfect.

So we cast a wide net, and filter millions of communications hoping for some lucky combination of Tor Browser + google "bomb-making" + Islamic + whatever = catching a terrorist. The thing is, that sometimes works, so we keep doing it. Why does it work? Well because if there's one place there's an endless amount of incompetence it's with the various low-brow criminals who try to cause problems. Sure the security people might miss the big fish, but they catch enough little dumb ones to justify the program to the rich and powerful, and convince them they should keep funding it so that way their new skyscraper might not get blown up.

So yeah, incompetence and stupidity are a sufficient explanation.

Smiley: tinfoilhat

Edited, Jul 15th 2016 11:45pm by someproteinguy


I should not have used meaningful as a qualifier. It gave you the idea that normal people are not subject to normal urges that come along with a taste of power. Because, naturally, they are.. just on a much smaller scale. You are right that cops are not above the law in the US, but they are working really hard to maintain the level of influence they have had in their domain.. just like most other groups and individuals on the planet.

So no, incompetence and stupidity are only possible explanations, but not sufficient ones.


Edited, Jul 16th 2016 3:35pm by angrymnk
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#143 Jul 16 2016 at 3:32 PM Rating: Default
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Timelordwho wrote:
Almalieque wrote:
ORRRRRR.. They target areas where terrorist tend to go to and THEN start tracking those individuals and their connections! I don't understand for the life of me why you people think that it is worth the resources to just randomly look at stuff.


Yet. The resource costs of data collection and analysis will likely go down.
I don't understand your connection. All I'm saying is that it makes no sense for you to randomly hack into someone who might be a terrorist when you have a list of personas visiting terrorist websites.
#144 Jul 18 2016 at 4:59 PM Rating: Decent
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Almalieque wrote:
What you are claiming as a possibility is ineffective for a malicious government to do...


Today. Maybe. As computing capabilities increase each year, it becomes more and more effective. If we'd had a conversation just 20 years ago about the ability of the NSA to collect even a tiny fraction of the data they collect from social media right now, you'd have made the same argument. Why spend all those resources collecting all that data? Um... Because as the cost for data storage and electronic transfer decreases, the value of simply slurping up all data you can get your hands on for later analysis and examination becomes greater. It literally is far more effective to grab all that data and run scans on the set looking for patterns that match whatever criteria you want.

Here's the thing though. Once you've collected that data, it's trivially easy to run any sort of search on it you want. So maybe officially you're looking for patterns of communication and behavior that pass some calculated threshold to justify closer inspection as a possible terrorist threat. But once you have the data, there's nothing at all preventing you from looking for behavior and communication patterns of politicians in the opposition party which may indicate they're having an affair, or don't actually go to church every Sunday as they claim, or that they consume alcohol when they claim to never touche the stuff, or any of a hundred different behaviors that aren't actually illegal in any way, but which might be embarrassing to the person or their employer (or constituents) if it were made public knowledge.

And again, that's what can be done right now using legal to obtain social media information. Which is problematic, but not a violation of privacy. If you put information out there that would allow someone to noodle out your secret furry fetish, then that's kinda on you, right? The only difference is that where once it would have required some dedicated investigator to follow you around with a camera and dig through your trash to find this stuff out, it can be discovered pretty quickly and automatically with pattern searches of a large enough data set. And it doesn't have to be targeted. You can just look for patterns and see who pops out, then decide what to do with the information.

Assuming most people are going to keep their "secret" stuff in secret places rather than public ones, I would hope you'd see the importance of making sure that hacking into people's home computers remain a restricted activity requiring due process to perform.

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...and would never be accepted by society.


Today. But if enough people actually do adopt the idea that "there's no privacy left anyway", then it's not unreasonable at all to suspect that future generations of citizens may not fight very hard to prevent arbitrary search of people's home computers. Again, I'm not talking about how things are now, but how they could be in the future if we aren't cautious.

Quote:
Even a script kiddie wouldn't do what you are proposing.


He would, if he could. It's the latter part that really is the sticking point here.
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#145 Jul 18 2016 at 5:06 PM Rating: Decent
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Almalieque wrote:
I don't understand your connection. All I'm saying is that it makes no sense for you to randomly hack into someone who might be a terrorist when you have a list of personas visiting terrorist websites.


Because you keep thinking of it in terms of "hacking in". As though someone's sitting at a keyboard, picking a random person out of a list and thinking "I'll hack this guys computer to see if he's doing something illegal". That's how how it'll happen though. I already explained this to you. What will happen is that, if we are not diligent at preventing it, some government agency will create a complex hacking program that continuously seeks out systems on the network, hacks into them automatically, and either scans them for interesting data that it transfers back to some central warehouse, or just slurps up everything that isn't a standard system file and sends it to said warehouse.

The only effort required once you implement a system like this is running a search on the massive resulting data. Which, in this scenario, would include both publicly accessible data via social media and other online activities *and* private information pulled off a very very large number of personal computers around the world. You don't have to target someone and look at their information. You look at all the information you have, search for patterns, and then pick out people that match.

You're literally looking at the entire issue backwards. And yes, there's a massive amount of value to a government to do this. We already see private institutions using data collection and data mining for things as trivial as improving the efficiency of their advertising efforts. You honestly can't imagine how a government might value this for law enforcement and national security? That's an amazingly narrow viewpoint you've got there.
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#146 Jul 18 2016 at 5:10 PM Rating: Default
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Gbaji wrote:
Today.
And Forever. When I say ineffective, I'm talking about both LOGICALLY and technically.

According to this logic, we should never give anyone any power ever, because one day, their technological power will be so great and the people would be so submissive, those people would abuse that power.

Gbaji wrote:

He would, if he could. It's the latter part that really is the sticking point here.
No, he wouldn't. You clearly don't understand the attack cycle, how scans work, how bandwidth works and anything about being stealthy. Since you know so much, please provide me the command that you would use to do such a scan.
#147 Jul 18 2016 at 5:15 PM Rating: Default
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Gbaji wrote:
Because you keep thinking of it in terms of "hacking in". As though someone's sitting at a keyboard, picking a random person out of a list and thinking "I'll hack this guys computer to see if he's doing something illegal". That's how how it'll happen though. I already explained this to you. What will happen is that, if we are not diligent at preventing it, some government agency will create a complex hacking program that continuously seeks out systems on the network, hacks into them automatically, and either scans them for interesting data that it transfers back to some central warehouse, or just slurps up everything that isn't a standard system file and sends it to said warehouse.

The only effort required once you implement a system like this is running a search on the massive resulting data. Which, in this scenario, would include both publicly accessible data via social media and other online activities *and* private information pulled off a very very large number of personal computers around the world. You don't have to target someone and look at their information. You look at all the information you have, search for patterns, and then pick out people that match.

You're literally looking at the entire issue backwards. And yes, there's a massive amount of value to a government to do this. We already see private institutions using data collection and data mining for things as trivial as improving the efficiency of their advertising efforts. You honestly can't imagine how a government might value this for law enforcement and national security? That's an amazingly narrow viewpoint you've got there.
Let me walk the dog with you on this, since you clearly don't understand. Let's ignore technical limitations and pretend the government just scanned every single computer in the nation and grabbed everything automatically. Now what?
#148 Jul 18 2016 at 5:57 PM Rating: Decent
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Almalieque wrote:
Gbaji wrote:
Today.
And Forever.


Seriously? That's incredibly naive of you.

Quote:
When I say ineffective, I'm talking about both LOGICALLY and technically.


Except that the logic follows the technical. If it costs me 100 man hours to hack into one person's computer and read his electronic diary, it's not efficient to use wide scale hacking of private computers as a means to find potential criminals.

If it costs me .000001 man hours to hack into one person's computer and read his electronic diary, it's very very efficient to use wide scale hacking of private computers as a means to find potential criminals.

Quote:
According to this logic, we should never give anyone any power ever, because one day, their technological power will be so great and the people would be so submissive, those people would abuse that power.


People will abuse any power you give them. My argument is to be cautious about what power we grant the government over our private information. I'm not sure why this is even remotely controversial. I'm not even proposing any specific legal change or activity. Just saying "let's make sure that people remember that privacy is important, because if they stop thinking it's important to them, then they wont resist if/when some government agency decides to try some sort of mass hacking scheme". I'm not saying what *will* happen, but what *might* happen. Why is that such a problem?

Quote:
Gbaji wrote:
He would, if he could. It's the latter part that really is the sticking point here.
No, he wouldn't. You clearly don't understand the attack cycle, how scans work, how bandwidth works and anything about being stealthy. Since you know so much, please provide me the command that you would use to do such a scan.


Smiley: lol x100

Please tell me you're kidding. I could actually write down all the ways you are wrong here, but it would take more time than I'm willing to spend writing, or that anyone else is willing to spend reading. Um... But for starters, let's just say that the very idea of typing "the command" is where you start off being wrong. You're still assuming a person sitting at a keyboard click clacking away. That's not remotely what I'm talking about here.

I've probably forgotten more about IP packets, TCP stacks, and physical device buffer structures than you will ever know in your lifetime.
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#149 Jul 18 2016 at 6:07 PM Rating: Decent
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Almalieque wrote:
Let me walk the dog with you on this, since you clearly don't understand. Let's ignore technical limitations and pretend the government just scanned every single computer in the nation and grabbed everything automatically. Now what?


Let's ignore the technical limitations and pretend the government just sent agents into every home in the nation and seized every single personal paper and document. Now what?

The answer is that I don't have to answer "now what?". We either accept that the 4th amendment exists for a reason, or we don't. If we do accept its existence (and importance), then it doesn't matter why someone might want to keep personal papers private. He has a right to do so, and that right doesn't change if that "paper" is in electronic form. The same answer applies to both situations equally.

Do you understand yet?

Edited, Jul 18th 2016 5:08pm by gbaji
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#150 Jul 18 2016 at 6:41 PM Rating: Excellent
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but it would take more time than I'm willing to spend writing
Holy ****! That's possible?
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#151 Jul 18 2016 at 7:27 PM Rating: Excellent
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but it would take more time than I'm willing to spend writing
Holy ****! That's possible?
According to the other thread he has a car and likes to drive around the suburbs and experience the freedom to go where he wants.

I don't judge.

Edited, Jul 18th 2016 6:29pm by someproteinguy
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